"Should we build a custom CMS or use WordPress?" is usually asked as a technology question. It is really a question about who maintains the site, and for how long.
What WordPress is genuinely good at
WordPress runs a large share of the web for good reasons: a familiar editing interface, an enormous plugin ecosystem, and a hiring pool that means you are never dependent on one developer. For a brochure site, a blog, or anything whose structure resembles pages and posts, it is usually the cheapest total cost of ownership.
The costs are real but predictable: plugins must be kept updated, each one widens the security surface, and a site left un-updated for a year becomes a liability rather than an asset.
Where it starts to work against you
A custom system earns its cost when the content is not shaped like pages and posts:
- Structured content with relationships — a product catalogue, an equipment register, a project portfolio with filters — where plugins end up approximating a database you could have designed directly.
- Editorial workflows that must match how your team works, rather than the other way round.
- Integration with an ERP, an inventory system or an internal API, where the plugin route means gluing together components nobody owns.
- Performance and security requirements that make a large plugin surface unattractive.
The tell is plugin count. When a site needs a dozen plugins to express its content model, the model has outgrown the tool.
The maintenance question decides it
Ask honestly who will maintain the site in two years:
- If it is a non-technical team with no retained developer, WordPress and its ecosystem is usually the safer bet.
- If you have, or will retain, a development partner, a lean custom system can be smaller, faster and easier to secure precisely because it contains only what you use.
A custom CMS is not automatically more work to maintain. It is less code, but it is *your* code — nobody else patches it for you.
A middle path
Modern frameworks make a third option practical: a custom front end built on Next.js with a small, purpose-built content layer covering exactly the content types you have. You get an editing interface your team understands, no plugin surface, and a site that renders fast and ranks well — without maintaining a general-purpose platform to publish a dozen pages.
That is how this site is built.
Where BK IT fits
We build both: WordPress where it is the right answer, and custom systems in Next.js, Node.js or PHP where it is not — through to ERP, mobile apps and the infrastructure and SEO work that keeps them running and found.
If you are weighing the two, tell us what your content actually looks like and we will tell you which way we would go, including when that is the cheaper option.